Sunday, June 5, 2011

bicas

the photo being used as the header comes from kylie walzak. she's my friend whom i met years ago in flagstaff before. she worked at new frontiers, the natural food store, that was originally on south milton. this was just before she left for west africa to work for the peace corps. when she returned in the early 00's (?), she moved to tucson and got involved with bicas. http://bicas.org/

kylie first invited me to wheat paste on their big wall in the bicas yard in 2009. that was still during my first year of the project when i was just starting to experiment with going big. their wall is about 20 feet tall. the piece i put up was 16 feet from top to bottom. yote got frustrated with me because it took all day saturday to get my pieces up. he started getting his birds up as the sun was setting saturday and said to me that i need to figure out how to get my pieces up quicker. it hurt when he said it, but it was that comment that lead to me figuring how how to do hugo's house (a 16 foot installation by myself for the first time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yypWrtQUQ8). so, thanks yote.

step and i went to bicas for the first time with yote in january 2010 for mlk,jr weekend. we got invited back this year and though yote planned to come, step + i had to represent.

this year we went in february. as happened in 2010, a big winter rain storm came in the day after we left. in fact, tucson had record levels of rain between january and march of 2010. my piece got hammered starting the day after i put it up. i was surprised to see it hanging in there as well as it was in light of the weather. it's a south facing wall too. i'd expect the piece to get beaten down.

anyway, this past february big heavy clouds started rolling in making for a most dramatic sunset. i've always loved kylie's picture from that day and finally got around to using it for a header. better late than never.